“Yes, child, you did,” and grandma’s hands lingered among the light green peas in her pan, as if she were thinking of an entirely foreign subject. “I knows nothing about this Mrs. Remington, only that she stared a good deal at the house as she went by, even looking at us through a glass, and lifting her spotted veil after she got by. She may have been as happy as a queen with her man, but as a general thing these unequal matches don’t work, and had better not be thought on. S’posin’ you should think you was in love with somebody, and in a few years, when you got older, be sick of him. It might do him a sight of harm. That’s what spoilt your poor uncle Joseph, who’s been in the hospital at Worcester goin’ on nine years.”
“It was!” and Maddy’s face was all aglow with the interest she always evinced whenever mention was made of the one great living sorrow of her grandmother’s life—the shattered intellect and isolation from the world of her youngest brother, who, as she said, had for nearly nine years been an inmate of a mad-house.
“Tell me about it,” Maddy continued, bringing a pillow, and lying down upon the faded lounge beneath the window.
“There is no great to tell, only he was many years younger than I. He’s only forty-one now, and was several years older than the girl he wanted. Joseph was smart and handsome, and a lawyer, and folks said a sight too good for the girl, whose folks were just nothing, but she had a pretty face, and her long curls bewitched him. She couldn’t have been older than you when he first saw her, and she was only sixteen when they got engaged. Joseph’s life was bound up in her, he worshiped the very air she breathed, and when she mittened him, it almost took his life. He was too old for her, she said, and then right on top of that we heard after a little that she married some big bug, I never knew who, plenty old enough to be her father. That settled it with Joseph; he went into a kind of melancholy, grew worse and worse, till we put him in the hospital, usin’ his little property to pay the bill until it was all gone, and now he’s on charity, you know, exceptin’ the little we do. That’s what ’tis about your uncle Joseph, and I warn all young girls not to think too much of nobody. They are bound to get sick of ’em, and it makes dreadful work.”
Grandma had an object in telling this to Maddy, for she was not blind to the nature of the doctor’s interest in her child, and though it gratified her pride, she felt that it must not be, both for his sake and Maddy’s, so she told the sad story of uncle Joseph as a warning to Maddy, who could scarcely be said to need it. Still it made an impression on her, and all that afternoon she was thinking of the unfortunate man, whom she had seen but once, and that in his prison home, where she had been with her grandfather the only time she had ever ridden in the cars. He had taken her in his arms then, she remembered, and called her his little Sarah. Perhaps that was the name of his treacherous betrothed. And she asked her grandmother if it were not so.
“Yes, Sarah Morris was her name, and her face was handsome as a doll,” grandma replied; and, wondering if she was as beautiful as Jessie, or Jessie’s mother, Maddy went back to her reveries of the poor maniac in the asylum, whom Sarah Morris had wronged so cruelly.
CHAPTER VIII.
SHADOWINGS OF WHAT WAS TO BE.
It was very pleasant at Aikenside that afternoon, and the cool breeze blowing from the miniature fish-pond in one corner of the grounds, came stealing into the handsome parlors, where Agnes Remington, in becoming toilet, reclined languidly upon the sofa, bending her graceful head to suit the height of Jessie, who was twining some flowers among her curls, and occasionally appealing to Guy to know “if it was not pretty.”
In his favorite seat in the pleasant bay-window, opening into the garden, Guy was sitting, apparently reading a book, though his eyes did not move very rapidly down the page, for his thoughts were on some other subject. When his pretty step-mother first came to Aikenside, three months before, he had been half sorry, for he knew just how his quiet would be disturbed, but as the weeks went by, and he became accustomed to Jessie’s childish prattle and frolicsome ways, while even Agnes herself was not a bad picture for his handsome home, he began to feel how he should miss them when they were gone, Jessie particularly, who made so much sunshine wherever she went, and who was very dear to the heart of the half brother. He knew, too, that Agnes would rather stay there, for her income did not warrant as luxurious a home as he could give her, and by remaining at Aikenside during the warmer season she could afford to pass the winter in Boston, where her personal attractions secured her quite as much attention as was good for her. Had she been more agreeable to him he would not have hesitated to offer her a home as long as she chose to remain, but, as it was, he felt that Lucy Atherstone would be much happier alone with him. Lucy, however, was not coming yet, and until she did come Agnes perhaps might stay. It certainly would be better for Jessie, who could have a teacher in the house, and it was upon these matters that he was reflecting.